Preface

“The future is already here - it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

                                             -- William Gibson 

If you are a software developer, you know the importance of feedback. Did the tests pass? Was the build successful? Has deployment started? Is deployment completed? Did it fail? Has the error rate increased in production? What are those errors?

In a fast paced, agile environment, you are responsible for keeping an eye on all these things, checking the build server, reading logs, having multiple browser tabs open, each with different things you want to check. You do all of that multiple times a day, and it consumes your precious time.

You want to fix issues as they appear, before your users start noticing.

You also do various chores - log to remote machines to run scripts, start deployments, do same things over and over again.

And you probably receive a lot of emails. Build server writes you more than any of your best buddies, and your girlfriend keeps asking who the hell is that Cron Daemon and why she keeps writing you day and night.

If only there was some robot that could help you carry your daily burdens, reduce the need to proactively look after all those important things, and would be ready to execute any mundane task you command it to.

Let me introduce you to Hubot - a friendly chat robot that can do all these things, plus show you animated pictures of cats and squirrels now and then.